CHAPTERSEVEN
RUX
One week turned to two weeks, and Rux hadn’t heard anything from Dana. His heart was sore, feeling like he had pushed her too hard on the terrace or had shown her affection too early in the relationship.
She had looked so hot, dripping with sexuality out there beneath the moonlight. When she had guided his hands to her waist, he thought his eyes were going to bulge out of their sockets.
Rux had almost choked on her peppermint scent and the heat emanating from her crotch. His shifter senses allowed him to detect when a woman was aroused, and Dana was scalding for him and felt like she was making sure he knew it.
What had he done, though? If she had wanted his hands on her?
Rux spent days pacing around his manor, sending his attendants home early, and running through the hallways as both a human and a panther. He was frustrated with himself and utterly confused by her change in mood on the terrace.
Rux tried leaving her a few messages, walking the line of desperation and that deep need for an explanation. He kept his tone even, trying to express how drawn to her he was without seeming like a creep.
But she hadn’t replied to a single message. Rux thought maybe he should just give her up, realize that she was a flash in the pan of his romantic life, and return to his cave of seclusion.
She was his mate, though, and that had lit a fire inside him that even the push away on the terrace couldn’t put out.
Rux heard that his mother was having lunch with Gerri after he hit the two-week mark without a reply from Dana. He decided he would crash it and pick Gerri’s brain about why she had matched them up in the first place.
Ellen and Gerri were holding shiny white mugs as Rux walked in through the front of the restaurant. Ellen seemed enthralled that her son was there, and Gerri, well, she didn’t seem surprised at all.
“You look like a man on a mission,” she said.
Her gray eyes glowed in the stream of light that filtered through the window they were sitting by. Rux sat next to his mother and gave her a light peck on the cheek.
“I guess you could say I am,” Rux said, leaning over the table and giving Gerri a light peck as well.
She smiled at him, placed the mug on the table, and then leaned against both hands.
“What’s on your mind, sugar?” she said with a wink.
Ellen smiled at him, rubbing her hand on his shoulder the way only a mother could.
Rux let out a long sigh.
“It’s Dana,” he said reluctantly. “Everything was going so well the other night on our date at the museum, but then it took a drastic turn, and I haven’t heard from her since.”
Both the women’s smiles descended into frowns.
“What happened, darling?” Ellen asked.
Rux didn’t want his mother or Gerri to think that he was some kind of horn dog. But he also didn’t want to reveal that it was Dana who had pulled him in close, forcing his hands onto her waist for a closer embrace.
“We kissed on the terrace, and she didn’t react well,” Rux said. “I apologized at the time, and she said that the kiss was amazing, but she needed time to think. I haven’t heard from her in two weeks.”
Gerri’s frown softened. She continued to stare at him, her eyes penetrating his soul.
“So, you’ve come to ask for advice?” Gerri asked, a playful pitch to her tone.
Rux drew a finger in a circle upon a table. He felt like a kid, asking his mother for advice on a girl he met at school. He felt that somehow, inherently, he should have just known exactly what to do.
“I was hoping for guidance, I suppose,” Rux said with a charming smile.
Gerri smiled, tilted her head, and raised her hands into the air.
“I’m not psychic, Rux,” Gerri said. “If you want to make something work with someone, you’re going to have to find out more about her background, her story. People often behave following what happened to them in their past.”